


κατά φύσιν: The Affection of an Olive Tree

by mariatheripper



Category: Original Work
Genre: Death, F/M, Family, Major character death - Freeform, Medicine, Natural History, Nature as a Character, Reincarnation, greek philosophy - Freeform, hopeful - maybe even a happy - ending, themes of life and death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:20:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27984468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariatheripper/pseuds/mariatheripper
Summary: Under the rains of a grief-filled night, a small sapling wakes....."These tears, as you call them, bring growth and life and floods and death. They are a cycle, one of many. A revolution of life. Did you know that?”The sapling cannot bring itself to respond the question, but the voice doesn’t seem to mind.“Of course not. You are still so small.”
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	κατά φύσιν: The Affection of an Olive Tree

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NotQuiteInsane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotQuiteInsane/gifts).



> Thank you to [NotQuiteInsane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotQuiteInsane) for betaing, as well as that 1am drafting phone call. You are a blessing and I love you <3

Life is found in animals and plants; but while in animals it is clearly manifest,

in plants it is hidden and not evident. For before we can assert the presence

of life in plants, a long inquiry must be held as to whether plants possess a soul

and a distinguishing capacity for desire and pleasure and pain.

[Aristotle] _On Plants_ 1.1 815A10-15

Tears are the first thing the sapling feels.

Droplets shatter around its delicate stem, wet and cold. The tiny, living thing has barely been able to feel for a few moments, and already there is water cloying the earth between its hair-thin roots, pulling it deeper into the soil as though threatening to drown it. Two small, thin leaves grasp for purchase upon a pool of water, oars atop a turbulent, sorrow-dark sea.

_The world is crying_ , is the first thing the sapling knows.

“That would imply sadness,” a voice hums. “Or pain. Or happiness.”

A shiver of awareness rattles through the newborn tree, but it does not respond. It cannot. For the first time in its short memory, the little sprout can _feel_ and _know_ but it is still so small.

The voice speaks again. “In this land, so many of the humans try to draw the secrets from my living world. They think they can pry open my veins and understand what they see.” The water pooling around the sapling’s stem shifts, laps, and though the sapling cannot feel any hint of shelter from the sky’s onslaught, it can feel that the voice has grown closer. Looming, but not malevolently. “They do so through analogy. Setting their knowledge of my cycles and customs alongside their own bodies, their divinities, and they begin to conjecture. The results are curious concoctions of truth and fancy.”

Another gentle hum. “For instance, a man who wove together medicine and religion believed that tears are merely diffused blood. But I do not bleed, and neither do you, little one. So how can the world be crying?”

The sapling shudders. The droplets battering down upon its tiny body are enormous and cold and no matter what the soft voice says, they are so irrevocably sad. The little sapling is soaked through by them.

“When you are great and strong, little one, you will revel in my rains. A philosopher, one of the inquirers, said that the seeds of all living things are carried down by the rain. These tears, as you call them, bring growth and life and floods and death. They are a cycle, one of many. A revolution of life. Did you know that?” The sapling cannot bring itself to respond the question, but the voice doesn’t seem to mind. “Of course not. You are still so small.”

The voice hums again, soft and melodic and harmonising so naturally with the pitter-pitter of rain. The sapling can feel something else niggle at its awareness, and it drags together as much strength as it can to pull itself out of the water _see_.

The world is dim, a grey-hued night cut through with rain. But not so far away, the sapling can see the shape of something huge and solid, sharp angles and sturdy planes. A warm glow emanates from within the structure, and the sapling can see two figures, one taller than the other, both huddled over a still form.

They seem to be crying as terribly as the sky.

“Would you like to see them?” the voice asks. “They are girls, sisters. Two of them. Crying over a corpse. It will be mine soon, the body at least. This is another cycle you will become familiar with.”

A painful pulse of sadness is thrumming within the sapling’s tiny body. The little plant does not understand, despite _seeing_ , but it knows, it feels, it can hear the girls’ soft crying even through this pouring rain.

It aches, but it’s still too small to understand why.

A touch lifts one of the sapling’s water-clogged leaves, and the voice soothes, “You will know in time, little one. All you have to do is survive.”

_Survive._

This is the sapling’s first memory. The feel of rain and sadness and cold and wet. The knowledge of tears and blood. The sound of a voice that wraps through the rain, through the night, through the sky and the dirt between the sapling’s roots. The sight of two girls crying with their whole hearts.

The voice is the first thing the sapling hears.

_They_ are the first thing the sapling sees.

Both are familiar, in their own overwhelming ways. But the sapling is tired and cold and the sadness is too much.

It’ll wait for the rains to stop. Because it knows they will, even if it doesn’t understand why. In time, the rains will cease and the sapling will be able to feel again without this awful ache.

So it draws its soggy leaves a little closer and waits.

The sapling grows slowly aware of the way the world changes around it, progressing forward, onward. The rain lightens, lessens, dampens into a soft trickle that gradually gives way to warm light that fills the sky with blue and white and spreads a tingling through the sapling’s little leaves.

It meets the sun, for the first time, and thinks that _this_ , this warmth, this heat, this drying gaze has the same power as the rain – growth and life and death. It could draw the world out of flood and keep heating, keep drying, until everything melts and withers and begs for the drowning rain.

Another cycle.

Thankfully, though, the sun refrains from cooking the world in the days following the rain. The earth dries but does not crack open, and the sapling mercifully does not boil in its own sap. The world is bright, so bright that the sapling can see its home clearly, the dusty soil and bursts of shrubbery lining the edges of low stone walls and that pale, rendered structure, squat but protective.

Then the sapling finally sees them, the little one before the taller one. They’re leaving the house, the little one spinning and babbling while the taller carries a dripping basket filled with cloths and nods along to whatever her sister is saying.

_Girls_ , the sapling thinks. It feels a pang of longing in its stem, in its leaves, but the feeling is not as painful as it was the night of the heavy rains.

The smaller girl stops when she catches sight of the sapling, and the sapling tries to wriggle, tries to wave. It startles when it hears an encroaching _click-clickclick_ – a large black insect is crawling toward it, and the sapling realises the creature has a particularly hungry look in its glittering eyes.

_Survive_ , the voice once said.

_This insect seems to have been given a similar instruction_ , the sapling thinks.

Then the insect is lifted off the ground and thrown in a wide arc off into the distance.

Bare feet, dusty and young, stop in front of the little sapling. A gentle finger touches the tip of a leaf, and the sapling feels something. Loving. Familiar, almost.

“Akeso!” she calls to her sister.

“I told you to stop calling me that.”

“Look, a little tree.”

With the woven basket still on her hip, Akeso walks over to them with a barely-concealed sigh. When she spots the sapling, she blinks in surprise. “I’m impressed it hasn’t been eaten by something yet.”

She fishes around in the basket and pulls out a soaked cloth, handing it to her sister. “Wring this out over it. If it lives, we will see what becomes of it.”

The sapling remembers the words of the rain, of the earth, of the humming that soothed like a cold caress. Survive. Survive. Survive.

The little girl bundles up the cloth and squeezes it over the sapling. An assault of water hits its leaves and stem, but not for long, not enough to drown it. The water is cool and refreshing and the sapling appreciates it greatly. “I am Melina,” the girl says. “You live beside our home, little tree, so please grow large and pretty.”

The sapling knows nothing of being large, nor of being pretty. But it at least has an idea of the former. It can feel the curious, wispy ends of the roots of an old, old tree that lives too far away for the little sapling to see, but seems to dominate this whole area with the span of its roots.

_I’ll become large_ , the sapling promises as Melina stands and hurries off to help Akeso. _And I’ll become strong._

It’s the sapling’s first promise, feeble but determined. It doesn’t know if little trees are supposed to make promises, but it can feel the desire to make these girls happy. To keep them safe. It will do its best to keep it.

The rains do not return, but the sapling does not mind. Melina brings it a cup of water every other day (“You cannot water it _every_ day, dear sister, or its roots will rot,” Akeso warned her) and the sapling feels warm and remembered. She also sends pointed looks to the birds that cackle and chirp on the roof of the house, warning them with glares and words not to eat the new little tree.

The sapling isn’t sure if the nefarious creatures respect her authority, but the sentiment is appreciated all the same.

After one of these occasions, while Melina’s small feet are on their way into the house, a man steps onto the girls’ land. He’s carrying logs, a pile of them on one of his shoulders and a sack of them in the other. He calls for Akeso, and she appears in the doorway with a scarf over her hair and tells him that he can stack the firewood inside.

The man’s huge sandals stomp precariously close to the sapling, and the little tree feels a prickle of irritation at the sight of the man. Although Akeso seems happy enough to see him, so the sapling doesn’t let the feeling linger.

A dark shadow glides over the sapling’s leaves, and for a moment the sapling believes one of the birds has finally decided to make its move. The little tree braces, buckles down, tries to curl its tiny roots into the soil because it’ll be damned if one of these sky rodents thinks it’ll take the sapling away from –

With a very faint tap, the sapling’s world goes nearly dark.

It takes a few confused, dimly-lit moments for the sapling to comprehend that no, it isn’t being mauled by a sky-rat, but rather something has fallen on top of it, large enough that it makes a dome the sapling isn’t yet tall enough to reach.

_It seems to be a curved slip of bark_ , the sapling realises. _From the wood the man was carrying._

A few shafts of light spear through cracks in the bark, enough so that the little sapling doesn’t feel completely suffocated. But it is darker than usual, and the sapling can already feel the tingling warmth from the sun fade from its leaves.

Still, the sapling doesn’t worry.

_Melina will find me when she comes with water in a few days._

Until then, the sapling is grateful that the bark at least shields it from those beady-eyed birds conspiring on the roof.

“Fortunate.”

The sapling startles a little, but soon recognises the voice that had spoken to it during the rains. The little sapling agrees with the voice, because protecting itself from those birds _is_ fortunate, and the voice had told it to _survive_ and it is.

The voice doesn’t say anything more on the matter, and the sapling can’t quite tell if its silence is approving or not.

Time in the sapling’s little enclosure moves lethargically, like its forgotten how to operate in such a tiny space. Without anything to _see_ and take joy in observing, the sapling is resigned to attempts at communication with the old colossal tree whose roots sometimes tickle the sapling’s. The old tree doesn’t have much to say, though – it thinks slowly, converses in gentle washes of sensation that feel like _tired_ and _stiff_ and _warm_ and _content_. The little sapling doesn’t really understand how _content_ can follow after the archaic ache the old tree groans about, but the old tree doesn’t seem interested in explaining so the sapling never finds out.

When the old tree becomes distracted – it is old and very large, but the sapling can feel its attention draw out of the roots and trickle back toward its trunk whenever the song of a particularly loud bird calls through the air – the sapling turns its attention to the shelter curled around it. The bark was once a part of another tree, so the sapling tries to communicate with it.

Except, the bark doesn’t reply to the sapling. It doesn’t… the sapling realises, with some horror, that it cannot _feel_ the bark, not like it can feel the few shrubs nearby and the old tree further away. There is just… nothing, an absence of…

“Life?”

The voice startles the sapling, but not enough to distract it from the dead thing draped over its prone little form.

_What will happen to it?_

The voice makes a small sound, like a soothing murmur, and the sapling isn’t sure what the voice is trying to console. “It will become a part of me again. A part of you, even. Perhaps not right away, but eventually. Do you remember what I told you about the humans in this land?”

The sapling does. It is small but not _that_ small. _They think. Inquire. Seek to understand._

“Your memory is sharp, little one. The very same philosopher who said that the rains bring seedlings of life claimed that everything has a portion of everything within it, and all these little portions move through the world in a vortex, mixing and separating. By his logic, as you grow, little one, you will mix with particles of wood in the air, perhaps even with that dead sheath protecting you, and they will become a part of you. The process of accretion. When you die, you too will dissolve and become a part of something else.”

The voice admits, “This theory is one of my favourites.” At the sapling’s silence, it asks, “Do you not like the notion of mixing with the dead, little one? This is nature. Natural order. The living and the dead are no different. All are a part of my domain.”

The sapling stirs unhappily. _The living are different_. _I am different to this bark. The girls are different to the silent body they were crying over._

“I did not say you were the same as the dead, little one. Only that you are both a part of my order. Guided by my law.”

_Oh_ , the sapling realises.

“Finally realise, did you?”

_You are Nature._

“And you are one of my precious children.”

Melina does not return with more water.

The rains come again, tapping on the husk of the bark incessantly, almost mockingly. But there is no ill-will in the deluge, since it soaks the ground around the bark shelter and keeps soaking until the sapling can gratefully drink up some of the moisture. The roots of the old tree do not fight the sapling for the drink, and the smaller is grateful for it.

Though time seems confused in the little shelter – dawns and dusks are swallowed into the darkness of the night, so the only daylight the sapling knows and sees is a few scant hours before the shadows arrive again – the sapling knows it passes because it can feel itself growing. It is exhausting, growing like this. The light trickling through the bark is bright but meagre, and the sapling feels starved and wasted with every new sprout of growth it manages.

But it made a promise. A promise to grow large and strong. A promise to survive.

This iron-strong shard of its desire keeps it growing, even as it feels ruined by the progress, even as it grows more and more tired. Its leaves brush the domed roof of its dead bark shelter, and the sapling is barely strong enough to feel it.

Will it die here, curled around itself until both the sapling and the bark disintegrate into particles that are indistinguishable from the rest of the dead things in the world?

_No. If no one will move this bark, I’ll grow through the cracks_ , it thinks, determined and a little desperate.

Survive. Grow. Survive. _Survive_.

The sapling’s raw determination receives a brief hum of acknowledgement from Nature, neither encouraging nor depreciating, but the sapling is learning to expect that. What does surprise it, though, is the tinkling of encouragement it feels around the base of its roots, a little message of support from the old tree too far away to see.

It bolsters the sapling, and as it prepares itself to begin the tight squeeze through one of those slivered gaps in the bark, it thinks, despite its exhaustion, _I will do this. I will see them again_.

The bark rattles, shifts a little, and it takes the sapling a moment to realise the movement is not because of the little tree’s newfound strength.

Light suddenly rains down upon the sapling, and the familiar face of Akeso is looking down at it, relief clear in her features.

“Melina!”

Another familiar face comes hurtling into view, and Melina shouts happily when she catches sight of the sapling. “You found it! Hello little tree, I’m sorry we lost you.”

“You have a memory like an overexcited pup.”

Melina pouts. “No I don’t! It’s Stilenos’s fault for dropping all this bark everywhere.”

“Yes yes, whatever you say. Go get some water for it.” A thoughtful look crossing Akeso’s face as she peers at the sapling, and half turned toward the house, Melina notices it.

“What are you thinking?” she asks her older sister.

Akeso glances at her quickly before gesturing to the area around the sapling. “When it gets bigger, we can dig up the space in this area and move my herb garden over here. They’re getting burned where they are now, and this tree will give them some shade.”

Melina smiles at the idea, then squats and gives the sapling an odd look. “Can you tell what it is?”

“Not yet. Give it a little more time.”

“I hope it’s an olive tree,” Melina says softly. Hearing something fragile in her sister’s voice, Akeso draws in closer, close enough to tap their temples together as they stare down at the sapling. “Dad really loved olives.”

***

The little sapling does as it promised. It survives and it grows and becomes large enough that it towers (with silent, gleeful victory) over the beetles and birds when they’re sifting around the dirt. It becomes a tree, still considered to be little in the view of Nature and the old tree over beyond the house, but when Melina passes by, its leaves are high enough that they brush against her cheek.

She always crinkles her nose at the feeling, perhaps because the tree hasn’t exactly grown into something pretty, like Melina wished when she’d been a bit smaller and her cheeks a little rounder. It is no longer soft, its trunk is dry and prickly and its leaves seem like they’ve been honed by one of the knives Stilenos carries with him to work.

Akeso said as much when the tree barely reached her waist, and the look Stilenos gave her was so very fond that the little tree couldn’t work up the desire to be irritated at the man’s continued presence.

“Should we plant more?” he suggested, rubbing a curled leaf between his fingers. “A crop of trees would yield enough olives that we could start selling some oil eventually.”

But Akeso was already shaking her head. “No, this one is special. And we have enough to do to worry about pressing olives.”

“Akeso!” Melina called from the house. “Clesisera is here, she says she has pains in her abdomen, just below where the baby is sitting.”

Recognising his impending dismissal, Stilenos stole a kiss from his wife and started gathering his sea-battered equipment. “I’ll leave you to your patients, love. But I’m not letting my olive oil dreams go so easily.”

The roots of the little tree have grown as well, curling through the dirt until it barely needs the support of the twin stakes standing sentry at its sides, compliments of Stilenos’s fussing. It absently wonders if the stakes will become a part of its own growing body if they are left beside it long enough. If the swirling vortex of mixing and separating, creation and dissolution, will bury the splinters of the stakes into the tree’s rough body.

_What type of tree did you come from?_ it asks the stakes, sometimes during the bright warmth of the day, other times during the night, when the world is quieter and all that are left awake are the plants that listen and the creatures that hunt.

The silence, like that of the bark from so many years ago, makes the tree uncomfortable. So it turns its attention to the old, wiry roots that run between its own, and feels an answering murmur from the old tree off beyond the house.

_Tell me about your birds,_ the little tree requests.

The old tree has not become any more verbose during the years the little tree has known it, but it will always indulge enquiries about the noisy songbirds that live in the old tree’s hollows and amongst its branches.

_They are beautiful_ , the old tree always says. _Colourful, and caring of their young. The smaller humans used to throw rocks at them, to try and dislodge the nests, so I urged the songbirds higher into my canopy, deeper into my recesses. In return, they stop rodents from stripping my leaves and insects from burrowing into my wood._

_They sing for me_ , the old tree sighs. _They sing for their lovers, their children, and for me, their home. I love them so._

The songbirds sing loudly – obnoxiously so, if anyone were to ask the little tree for an opinion. But the adoration it always feels from the old tree when they talk about the birds is so gentle, so whole that the little tree would never dare diminish that.

No matter how off-tune the songbirds are.

It takes a while, but eventually the little tree’s branches spread wider, its canopy fills with more leaves, and when the sun’s light is shining down from even the slightest angle, the tree throws the start of what will become an impressive shadow across the dry dirt.

Melina is the first to notice this, pausing on her way inside. She looks from the filtered light dancing around her bare feet and up to the little tree.

With an air that is solemn and maybe a little dramatic, she sucks in a chest full of air and calls toward the house, “Akeso! Rally your troops!”

It takes a few minutes and some exasperated pointing for Akeso to realise what Melina is talking about, and she nods when she sees the impressive patch of shade the little tree is casting.

“We’ll till it today, but we should wait for it to rain again before we move any of the herbs.”

“Finally,” Melina says with a huff and a smile. “The ants living beneath the bushes always crawl up my legs whenever I have to pick the sage.”

Akeso turns very slowly to look at her sister. “ _That’s_ why you are always so busy whenever we have to gather herbs.”

Melina’s eyes widen. “No! Of course it isn’t. I really did have to clean all those pots.”

Akeso rolls her eyes. “No excuses anymore, baby sister.”

The little tree does its best to disperse shade over both of them as they dig lines into the dirt immediately around its base. Melina fills the warm, walled space with soft chatter that eventually shifts into this chastising tirade aimed at a cockroach that had been doing quite a good job of pretending to be a pebble until she’d nudged it with her toe. She chases it out of the garden with a broom, but the little tree barely hears her. Its attention becomes affixed to the sight of Akeso wobbling, hand pressed over her mouth while she leans heavily on the hoe for support.

She vomits onto the tossed dirt, and the little tree starts to feel something akin to anxiety curling up its trunk.

Melina is beside her sister in a heartbeat, hand rubbing her back while she pulls Akeso’s hair away from her mouth. The elder is staring down at the sick with blatant incomprehension, silent as Melina asks if Akeso thinks it’s something she ate, if she’s feeling unwell.

The little tree tries not to drop all of its leaves in stress.

Then the incomprehension fades into reluctant realisation, and tentatively, warily, Akeso touches her stomach. Melina and the little tree both go very still.

Neither sister says anything for a long few moments, not until Akeso goes pale again and Melina quickly gathers up her hair so she doesn’t dirty herself.

Melina bites her lip as her sister empties her stomach, looking as unsure as Akeso. “Let’s go inside and I’ll find something for the nausea,” she says gently. Akeso simply nods and wipes her hand across her mouth like a boxer at the end of a fight.

Their apprehension soon bleeds away, though.

How can it not?

After the next rain, when the soil is saturated and the little tree’s leaves have been washed of any collected dirt, Akeso and Melina transplant all of the garden’s herbs away from the ants and into the little tree’s garden bed. The little tree still cannot offer much shade, and the shadow it does cast is dotted with shimmering light, but it tries its best and the girls seem pleased with its efforts regardless.

The tree had long ago watched Akeso explain to her younger sister the uses of all the herbs she kept in the garden – pointedly highlighting the ones that are poisonous. She reminds Melina again as they plant them all now, and the little tree watches as Melina recites the names of the plants and Akeso rubs a hand over her flat stomach.

In increments, they begin to talk about it – the life growing within Akeso. Melina’s wariness fades into excitement, especially as Akeso’s belly grows and the baby survives the first month of its new little existence.

Akeso’s excitement is a little slower to manifest, but she seems incapable of remaining impassive when Stilenos returns from work every day, kisses his wife, and proceeds to coo at her stomach like the tiny wisp of growth in there can understand him.

The little tree thinks he is ridiculous, but it cannot fault the man for being so enamoured with a new, precious life growing in the one he loves.

Sometimes the tree is overwhelmed by a longing to be closer to them. But it knows its bounds, this sturdy and still body it inhabits, so it busies itself with caring for its little herb garden, determined to help this growing family in any way it can. 

_There’s ants_ , the little tree tells the older tree with some disgust. _How do I get rid of the ants?_

The older tree’s reply is weary but contains the barest sparkle of amusement. _You cannot, you are but a tree. Perhaps if you lured a bird or two onto your branches you could deter the insects._

The little tree really does not appreciate the suggestion, but another glance at the thick black line of ants trampling all over its herb garden makes it reconsider.

_There are other birds beside songbirds and those beady-eyed scavengers, aren’t there?_

The amusement from the old tree sparkles again, briefly, as if the question was sweet and utterly outside the older tree’s field of interest. _My songbirds are lovely_ , it replies unhelpfully.

“The humans consider those ‘beady-eyed scavengers’ to be a form of one of their gods, you know,” Nature remarks, apparently interested in their conversation.

The little tree doesn’t think it has ever seen anything remotely holy in the slightly crazed look on those bird’s faces – maybe because it was always too busy trying not to get eaten by the birds to really notice anything redeeming in their features. Nevertheless, the little tree still doesn’t want them living on its branches. At least the songbirds seem to sing with a purpose, the little tree can give them that much. The beady-eyed sky rodents just caw and cackle and cry for the sake of it, and it is nearly enough to urge the little tree to uproot itself so it can smack the damn things.

A tinkling sound echoes around the little tree, and it takes the tree a moment to realise that it is laughter. Nature is laughing at it.

“You amuse me, child of mine.”

_I am surviving_ , the tree replies, if a little sullenly.

“Indeed you are.”

It is a warm afternoon and the little tree has divided its attention between trying to spruce its canopy into the most appealing living environment any bird would dream of nesting in, and burning the despicable line of ants with sheer will alone, when Akeso collapses.

She has been gardening for the better part of the morning, digging up dead and decomposing plants and snapping the heads off ones that have gone to seed so she can prepare them for use next season. When one or both of her hands were free, she had attentively rubbed her large, round belly, and the little tree had been making sure that its survival-sprucing never interrupted the shade it had been throwing on the soon-to-be mother.

But then Akeso went to stand, and the tree watched in blatant horror as her body turned rigid and water and blood started trickling onto the pale dirt from beneath her dress.

She makes a sound, low and wounded, and begins to gasp as she stumbles toward the little tree for balance. Her fist closes over a clump of leaves and the tree tries to tell her, _no, not there, they won’t hold you –_

But she falls anyway, ripping out a handful of the tree’s leaves. She lands on her hip, snapping a clump of fennel stalks beneath her. The little tree can see the curve of Akeso’s shoulders as her breathing becomes laboured, but it can also see the dirt and streaks of blood on the soles of her feet, much closer than they should have been.

The little tree cannot even marvel at the sensation of its senses being split between tree and leaves. It can only gather as much shade as it can to protect Akeso and watch in horrible distress as she keeps trying and failing to breathe in enough air to call for Melina.

Watching this is terrifying, because little tree knows.

It knows how dangerous the birthing process is for mothers and their young. It has seen too many tears and prayers of both joy and sorrow in Akeso and Melina’s house to be naïve of the realities of the complications, of the courses and difficulties and absolutes of Nature.

It knows, even if it cannot properly _remember_ , mortality rates and prayers from husbands losing wives and heirs in single tragic swoops.

Perhaps it even remembers crying and praying itself, thought it cannot be sure

“As constructs of the living, births and deaths are momentous,” Nature comments. “But coming-to-be and passing-away are merely processes of change from one form into another. The transformation demands neither joy nor sorrow.”

The little tree wants to scream at Nature, but it has no voice.

It can only wait and watch.

“Akeso!”

The little tree feels a dashing of relief at the sight of Melina, scrambling out of the house and toward her sister. She spies the blood and fluids staining Akeso’s dress and legs and her complexion pales, but her voice remains strong, her hands unwavering as she touches Akeso’s face and kisses her dampening hair.

“Breathe, breathe for me. In and out. Keep up a rhythm. And stay awake, don’t you dare faint on me.”

Melina throws her sister’s arm around her shoulders and heaves the pregnant woman inside the house. The leaves stay clutched in Akeso’s hand the entire journey, so the little tree watches through its leaves, senses bleary and dulled, as the girls transition from light into dim interior shade, from dirt onto soft bedding. This close, it can hear every hitching breath and see the tears rolling down Akeso’s cheeks.

There is a man, young and wide-eyed, sitting on the windowsill. He must have been talking to Melina, the little tree suspects, because he swings a frightened look to the younger sister for an explanation, or instructions. She snaps at him to go down to the docks and call for Stilenos, and the boy runs as soon as the words are out of her mouth.

Melina becomes a whirlwind of collecting herbs and repositioning her sister. She examines Akeso periodically while she lights an offering beside a little statue of Asklepios sitting in a nook on the wall. With one hand strangling Akeso’s wrist, just above where she grips the little tree’s leaves, and the other white-knuckled on the nook’s sill, Melina prays loud and clear for the god to help her deliver Akeso and the baby safely.

Silently, but with no less desperation, the little tree prays too.

But not to any god, not this time.

_Help her_ , the little tree begs Nature. _Please. Please help them._

The little tree can feel Nature’s presence, observant and frustratingly unresponsive despite its proclivity toward ceaselessly quoting philosophy. It realises that it should be praying to something else, something that would care enough to help, but then Akeso is screaming and Melina is barking orders.

The pair of women have fire in their eyes and little care for the courses and difficulties and absolutes of Nature.

It gives the little tree hope, and the girls do not disappoint.

The hours of labour are harrowing. As they work, as Akeso endures and pushes and Melina manages everything from the delivery to Akeso’s bleeding, the little tree warily extends a shard of its focus to Nature. It half expects Nature to exercise some unprecedented wrath at the sight of this defiance of its laws, but Nature only seems curious at the notion.

The little tree feels Nature’s presence thicken around Melina and Akeso, shimmering and inspecting. “I find this fascinating. Some physicians from that small island say, ‘for in cases where we may have the mastery through the means afforded by a natural causation or by an art, there we may be craftsmen, but nowhere else’. They use their skills to control me, and sometimes they succeed.”

Nature’s capacity for indifference is truly baffling to the little tree. _Craftsmen of life, too?_

“A child can save a sapling from a beetle. A physician can save a mother and her baby from a potentially fatal labour. An old tree can save the lives of a family of songbirds. I make life but everything living can preserve it. And they do, because they crave happiness – short, fleeting happiness. Their own and others’.”

The piercing cry of a newborn baby splits the blood and sweat-scented room, and the little tree feels Nature brush against its leaves, against Akeso’s cramping hand. “You do too, little one. The human philosophers I so enjoy watching believe that plants have souls, emotions, and intelligence. I have seen you wilt and love and wonder as all living creatures do. If you also wish to fight against my courses, I do not mind this, for your time does not flow as mine does, nor does theirs. In the end, I will reclaim it all.”

_But not yet?_ the little tree asks as Akeso whines in pain.

“Living bodies have a natural tendency toward life, toward survival. This is their nature. Their bodies fight every day to live – they heal, they adapt, they grow. Until they are irreparably damaged, and the tendency shifts toward deterioration. She is healing, little tree. She will survive.”

The little tree doesn’t believe Nature’s words, not until Melina’s shoulders begin to loosen and Akeso heaves a relieved sob. For a numbing moment, it can’t help but wonder if the lives of Akeso and the crying little baby can still be considered natural. If Melina’s skill hadn’t transformed them from adhering to the laws of Nature to something else, something defiant and artificial.

“All things living are mine, little tree,” Nature reassures it. “They live, so they are mine. They die, and they are still mine. They are manipulated by craftsmen, but they will always belong to me.”

The little tree is too exhausted to acknowledge the reply. It lets its consciousness fade out of the leaves Akeso gingerly releases, but not before it hears Stilenos barging into the house, calling for Akeso in a panic. Two exhausted women draw him toward the front of the house, where a tiny baby’s wails signal the victory of a hard-won battle.

The little tree is so drained from the ordeal that it almost doesn’t notice the bees that come and visit its flowers in the following days, polite and efficient. It thinks a few might have commented on a tang of sourness in its pollen, and the little tree feels like letting the hive know that it’s been a rather stressful season.

The little tree doesn’t even realise what _flowers_ and _bees_ and _pollen_ mean.

Not until the girls finally emerge from the house, and Melina seems to light up at the sight of the little tree. She bounces over while Akeso takes a moment to squint up at the sunlight before following after her sister. Cradled in her arms is a little baby swaddled in linen.

“Hey Akeso, it’s fruiting,” Melina says happily. She holds a few tufts of leaves out of the way and Akeso smiles when she catches sight of a few newborn olives hanging from the tree’s branches.

“A few more and Stilenos will start harvesting them for his oil press,” Akeso replies with a smirk.

Melina touches the baby’s nose. “Sorry to say Hieronos, but your daddy’s a little weird.”

“You think all men are weird. Except for Demetrios.”

The blush that spreads over Melina’s cheeks makes her sister laugh. Akeso runs her fingers over Melina’s hair and touches their temples together, like she had so many years ago, and Melina clutches at Akeso’s dress as she gently tickles the palm of the little baby bundled between them.

The little tree doesn’t have words for how much it loves them.

***

The first birds to move into the little olive tree’s canopy make the tree regret ever giving these flying rats a chance at atonement. They peck and peel the bark from its thickening trunk and make a general ruckus amongst its branches. The rude things only stay for a season, thank goodness, but they are replaced by a squawking pair of birds who seem to think that the olives so lovingly grown by the little tree are theirs for the taking.

Thankfully Stilenos notices the thieves before they can take too many, and the little tree feels a sense of silent comradery bolster between them.

There are no new residents after that, not for a while. The ants live on in the herb garden, swarming when the rains are near and dispersing almost entirely when the sun begins to burn with purpose. The little olive tree grows, becomes taller than both Melina and Akeso, and just barely scrapes past Stilenos’s curly hair (to its own private satisfaction). The shade its canopy casts is decidedly starting to be impressive. Every year its harvest of olives grows thicker and thicker, until one season Stilenos and the olive tree are spending most of their time fighting off scavenging birds who have come for the ripening fruit.

On one such occasion, Akeso and Hieronos watch from the doorway of the house, the former laughing while young Hieronos stares at his father in bemused judgement. Akeso has laughed a lot in recent years, and the olive tree is so very grateful for that.

“Mama!”

Akeso turns and collects up a little girl with the same wildly curly hair as her father. “Lali, your daddy is showing off how brave he is.”

Stilenos props himself against the olive tree’s trunk and peers at his family. “I’m sensing mockery.”

“No idea what you mean,” Akeso says with a small smile. “You’re still our hero.”

Eulalia makes a happy noise. “Daddy! Hero!”

Stilenos promptly abandons the olive tree to kiss his daughter square on the nose and pull his son into his arms.

The olive tree can’t really blame him.

Just before Eulalia’s birth, Melina married that wide-eyed young man Demetrios and moved into a home of her own nearby. But she is over often enough that the departure is somewhat forgivable, and the sisters still run their medical practice out of the house that is now Akeso’s.

Their family is thriving, and the olive tree is so very content.

During the steamy heat of summer, a small group of physicians visit the village and have the audacity to set up a stall near the market. The olive tree hears a neighbour telling Akeso that these travelling doctors had been taught at the School of Cos, across the sea, and that maybe she should leave the healing to them while they’re in town.

The olive tree bristles, offended, but it is nothing compared to the chill in the smile Akeso gives her talkative neighbour. “My father was the best physician up and down this coast, and he taught me everything he knew. But by all means, if you wish to put your life in the hands of a philosopher from Cos who’d sooner feed you enough hellebore to kill you than save you, be my guest.”

“They seem like good young men,” the neighbour censures.

The smile becomes even colder. “Regardless, my practice is staying open.”

The physicians in the marketplace receive several patients during their stay, mostly out of curiosity than any kind of defection from the existing medical practices in the village. Melina makes sure to assure Akeso that they are second-rate compared to the healing skills of her beloved sister. Akeso and the olive tree see proof of this in the steady stream of pregnant women and new mothers that still visit their home.

Their health and happiness are worth more than any embellished title from across the sea.

Over the course of a few days, the pleasant heat of the warmer season changes. The air becomes dryer, the soil warmer, the sun hotter. Any leaves the olive tree exposes to the baking heat begin to curl at the edges, and the olive tree is parched constantly.

One night, thunder rumbles endlessly, and the olive tree watches as Melina and Demetrios appear on Akeso’s doorstep with some wine, a bowl of food, and an excuse so the two of them won’t have to be alone while the Heavens grumble so loudly.

In the morning, the sun refuses to rise and thick darkness blankets the sky.

“It is smoke, little one,” Nature says, utterly unconcerned.

The fires are wild and terrifying, consuming every living thing on the outskirts of the village before advancing toward people’s homes. Hot ash and smoke fill the air and plaster the olive tree’s leaves, suffocating it, scorching it.

It hears prayers, desperate and frightened, asking Zeus to spare them, to forgive them, to relent.

Beneath pain, the olive tree finds these prayers curious.

_They’re praying_ , it says to Nature. _But not to you._

As usual, Nature doesn’t seem bothered. “I am not divine.”

_Why do you let them think their gods are doing this to them?_

“I have no obligation to them, little tree. I was not made for them. They were made by me.”

_It seems cruel._

“Cruel? This is not cruelty, I love them.”

_It doesn’t look like you love them._

Nature laughs, as if amused at the idea of a little olive tree knowing more about love than the great spirit of the world.

The olive tree doesn’t think burning alive is very amusing.

“It is another cycle, little tree. Fire cleanses the debris, and the ashes of the dead enrich the soil for the next growth. They are afraid because they do not understand.”

The olive tree doesn’t believe that a lack of understanding has anything to do with the fear permeating the smoke and ash. 

The house has been empty since dawn, when men had bashed on the door and called everyone to help draw water up from the shore to put out the fires. Stilenos and Demetrios had gone with them while Akeso and Melina gathered the children and got as far away from the cloying smoke as they could.

The olive tree can only wait for them to return, the heat in the air burning the fruit of its branches. Eventually, Demetrios and a man the olive tree doesn’t recognise stumble into the yard, hauling a heavily breathing Stilenos into the house. The olive tree is startled when it sees the bloody, fleshy mess that should be his right foot.

The strange man hurries out a moment later, and Akeso soon returns, coughing amidst the smoke-filled air.

A panicking Demetrios meets Akeso at the door. “He saved a child that was trapped by some falling branches, but the fire burned his foot badly.”

She pushes past him and kisses Stilenos hard before slapping him none too gently. “You’re a selfless fool.”

Stilenos laughs and coughs. “I love you too.”

It doesn’t take long after that for a thump to land on the front door and a voice declaring, “The fire is out! We’re safe!” to ring through the streets. Demetrios leaves Akeso to find Melina and the children, and when Melina returns, Stilenos receives a worried slap from her too.

By the next morning, the smoke has cleared enough that murky light rains down upon the village, but the smell of ash lingers. That evening, Akeso cards her fingers through her husband’s hair as he vomits for the seventh time that day and says, “Stilenos, love. I’m going to have to amputate your foot.”

He doesn’t argue, and the olive tree can only respect him for that.

During the night, while Akeso and Melina tend to Stilenos in shifts, the olive tree tugs on a wispy root that barely brushes its own, and asks the old tree just beyond the house if it’s okay.

The olive tree doesn’t receive a reply.

It takes until dawn to realise that the old tree isn’t simply ignoring the olive tree, or unhurriedly formulating an answer.

It takes until dawn because for the first time in all its life, the olive tree watches the sun rise from beyond the edges of its view and it doesn’t hear the chatter of the songbirds.

The olive tree tries again, searches in the root system for grief, for sadness, even for that familiar tired acknowledgment.

But there is nothing save for quiet stillness, and the olive tree realises that trees do not bleed, they do not have hearts as animals and humans do, but they can die of heartbreak.

Stilenos’s screams are painful to endure, but the olive tree trusts in Akeso’s judgement. It trusts in the logic of cutting out the dead or diseased parts so that the rest can live on. Melina has her hands on his shoulders, holding him down, while Demetrios has taken the children down to the coastline to distract them.

Stilenos faints, eventually, from the pain, and Melina joins Akeso at the foot of the bed and makes quick work of the rest of the procedure. They discard and stitch and anoint and bandage, and only rest when the stump is clean and dressed.

They take a moment for themselves to breathe and cry in sheer relief, and the olive tree is so very proud of them.

_This is what love is supposed to be_ , it thinks as Akeso tearfully kisses her husband’s forehead in apology. _Sharing happiness as well as pain._

“This love is ephemeral,” Nature says. “Human.”

_Your love permits you to destroy everything, to destroy yourself_ , the olive tree retorts.

The olive tree is not human, yet it knows that Nature’s idea of love is terrifying.

Stilenos slowly recovers, much to everyone’s relief, and is given a wooden prosthetic carved for him by someone in the village. He faithfully uses olive oil to stop the wood from drying out and splintering.

One mild day on the cusp of the winter, Stilenos ambles outside with a crutch under one arm and his new leg in his hand, and sits himself under the shade of the olive tree. He’s graceful enough to avoid crushing the olive tree’s herb garden, even with only one foot, so the olive tree shakes out a few of its branches and dumps a handful of olives onto Stilenos’s head.

The man looks up at the tree questioningly, then an annoying smile splits his face. “For my new foot?” He waves the wooden attachment, and the olive tree stares at him in silent exasperation.

He chuckles, and sits back against the trunk. “You know, Akeso and Melina’s father was a follower of the old Pythagoreans, or at least he believed in cycles of reincarnation. When I first met him, he told me I’d better cherish Akeso because in the next life I’ll be a cockroach and while all the housewives are trying to kill me with brooms, all I’ll be able to think about is how much I miss her.”

After a pause, he says, “I don’t know if I believe in reincarnation. I have a family I’d rather not be separated from, even if we would meet again at the end of the journey. One of the men I work with is constantly spewing all these theories about nature, about souls in plants. He told me that some philosophers say that the soul of a tree or an herb is only a fraction of the soul humans have, able to feel nothing but desire. Others link their souls with the world, a piece of an intelligent cosmic vortex. Or they believe in reincarnation.”

A calloused hand pats the trunk of the olive tree. “Akeso sometimes says that she believes you’re special, because they found you so soon after they’d lost him. If you’re here, stuck in this olive tree, I want you to know that I’ll love Akeso for the rest of my life, for all of them. Even if she did hack off my leg.”

The olive tree remains silent as always, but does drop a few more olives for the sake of Stilenos’s new foot.

Stilenos laughs again as he picks an olive out of his hair, and with a wide smile, adds, “Also you still owe me seven drachmai, father.”

As Stilenos begins to navigate his new appendage, a pair of tiny birds make a nest in the olive tree, drawing up a shelter for winter. They are polite if a little spry, but awfully delicate, so the olive tree makes sure to focus on thickening its leaves for protection. Stilenos gives them a good looking over when they first settle, and both the man and the tree approve of the new presence amongst the olive tree’s leaves.

***

Melina dies giving birth to her first child.

The olive tree remembers the day Melina burst into Akeso’s house, crying and laughing and hugging her sister because she was pregnant, finally after so many years of trying, she was going to have a little baby and a family like Akeso and Stilenos.

Akeso laughed and cried with her, and the olive tree couldn’t be anything but happy for her. It had seen so many years of tears and heartache and doubt and prayers for fertility to be anything but happy.

But the olive tree should have known.

Akeso barely made it through the birth of Hieronos alive, and she’d been younger then, stronger.

The olive tree absently remembers its love for another woman, stronger still, lost in a flood of blood after birthing her second daughter.

Nature is not merciful.

The sky doesn’t cry this time, not as it had the last time the olive tree had seen Akeso this upset. It understands now that it’s because Nature does not feel sadness, or pain, or happiness. It once told the olive tree that some philosophers believe there must be other worlds just like this one, innumerable worlds, and Nature only thought the idea curious. The olive tree doesn’t think Nature would care if it lost any of those other worlds, or if this one passed into some divine conflagration and bypassed the cycles of death and rebirth entirely.

If Nature lost every precious child, every heartbeat, everything it supposedly loves – it would simply wait, and eventually begin again.

The olive tree is different.

It feels wrenching and twisting grief, with the entire capacity of its soul. Akeso’s sobs brutalise any sense of peace the olive tree has ever known, and the sight of Melina’s still form destroys all it will know.

“‘They die because they cannot join the beginning to the end’,” Nature quotes.

Hatred wells inside the olive tree, but the sound of Akeso whispering shattered apologies against Melina’s forehead drags the hatred into a pit of dark grief.

“They say the celestial spheres are immortal because they spin endlessly,” Nature says softly. “Their revolutions repeat, much like my cycles, and will continue on forever. Living things are not like the stars, little tree. They cannot be, not when you can find the beginning and the end in the seeding of a dying thing.”

The olive tree does not care. All it does is watch, in aching sorrow, as Stilenos gathers his wife and brother-in-law to his chest, Akeso with blood up to her elbows and Demetrios with a quietly crying baby in his arms.

They heal, but never fully.

The olive tree sees it in their heartache, then eventually in the nostalgic and loving stories they tell the little girl of her lost mother.

The olive tree watches over them as they grow older and stronger and then frailer. Demetrios and Althaia move into Akeso and Stilenos’s home and they stay together until the night Akeso wanders out into the garden and stares, for a long time, at the leaves of the olive tree.

“Akeso,” Stilenos says from the doorway.

She barely looks at him. “I’m cold, Stilenos.”

Her husband approaches her, a master by now on his prosthetic. “That’s because you’re out here in a dress and nothing else. Come inside, love.”

“I’m cold.” She sounds so tired. Stilenos does too, when he tries to beckon her inside again.

Her head snaps toward him, but she doesn’t move. “When will Melina come over again? I want to see her.” She feels behind her blindly until the tips of her fingers scrape against the olive tree’s trunk. “ _We_ want to see her.”

Stilenos says nothing, but when he goes inside he soon returns with a blanket and wraps both of them up in it as they sit at the base of the olive tree.

The stars turn in the sky, endless and immortal in their rotations.

But here, so far from the heavens, the olive tree feels when the two souls huddled at its base fade to one.

And then none.

The olive tree doesn’t understand Nature’s remark about the passing of time until after it loses Akeso and Stilenos. Their children grow older, pair off into families of their own, and eventually the house starts changing, in furnishings, in colour, in material. The garden changes, the herbs die and are replaced with vegetables, and other smaller trees are scattered around the small walled area.

Men come, in armour, on horses, with weapons and shouting and suddenly the house is empty, abandoned.

The fussier plants in the garden die in their absence, their bodies decomposing atop the dry soil. The olive tree’s unpicked fruit is divided between the birds ripping at its leaves and the rats foraging at its base.

A new family eventually moves into house, and the olive tree doesn’t recognise them. It doesn’t love them. And suddenly it understands that its own lifetime is wholly different to that of the lives stumbling in and out of this little pale house. It understands, with a heavy, sorrow-drenched soul, why the old tree it had grown up with had been so very, very tired.

The olive tree continues growing, continues fruiting. Its trunk twists into a thick, gnarly coil of dark wood, tough and strong, and its canopy becomes thick and full with leaves that shade half the yard no matter where the sun is in the sky.

It’s fulfilled its promise, and its girls are no longer here to see it.

The cycles of Nature dictate its life, its growth. The words of Nature drift between the cracks in its bark, twine through its wiry branches.

“These feelings will become dull, in time. You will see, little olive tree.”

The olive tree doesn’t believe Nature. How can it, when the world has changed so much yet the tree still aches from the sadness that lives in the moisture in its trunk, in the dusty green of its leaves, in the tiny pale flowers before it fruits? How can it, when the lifeless husk of the old tree beyond the house sits there for decades before humans cut it down, and every time the olive tree feels the shrivelled remains of its roots, it is reminded of the love – the _adoration_ – the old tree had felt for its songbirds.

It’s reminded of the silence. An old tree dying from a broken heart.

“You do not need a heart,” Nature says. “Or emotions, as humans do. What is the use? You can survive without them.”

_They are not for survival._

Nature simply replies, “You are not human.”

Yet, it still hurts.

It is not human, it is not animal, but it is alive. Disease comes for it, eventually. The world has changed again and the olive tree is too preoccupied trying to feel anything but apathy for the strangely dressed people who want to cut the tree down, that it doesn’t notice the parasite eating into its trunk until it feels it. The drain, the loss of energy. The fraying edges where the moist flesh turns brittle and hard and dead

It thinks, _Finally. My body feels as my soul does._

The strangely dressed people do not cut the olive tree down, but build another house over the ruins of its original home. The olive tree has been old for a while now, but it only acknowledges it when the last remains of its precious history is chipped away and thrown into a pile to make way for a new home.

The old olive tree barely takes notice of the home’s inhabitants, for they are merely another short cycle in its long life, until one day it hears,

“Akeso!”

“I told you to stop calling me that.”

It looks and sees two figures walking down the path beside the house. A woman dressed in hospital scrubs alongside another woman, slightly shorter and plumper, pushing a stroller protecting a small child.

The old olive tree feels heartache again, after so long.

“ _Akeso_ , _Akeso_ ,” the shorter sings. “My big sister finally becomes a doctor, and you think I’m not going to let the neighbourhood know? Our resident goddess of healing is here, people!”

A small, excited murmur comes from the pram, and the shorter woman bends over the handle so she can smile at the child inside.

“See?” she says to her sister, who rolls her eyes. “You didn’t survive medical school for me not to celebrate loudly.”

“Dumbass.”

“You are dying,” Nature mentions.

The old olive tree doesn’t reply. It doesn’t need to, the parasite’s presence is obvious.

Nature tries again. “They look like your girls.”

The old olive tree agrees tiredly. _You remember them?_

“I remember all of my precious children. Flora and fauna, living and dead. Time washes them from so many memories, but they always remain a part of me. Every raindrop, every beetle, every tree and every songbird.”

A touch, delicate and soft but firm and unyielding, brushes over the old olive tree’s senses. “You will see them again soon,” Nature promises.

The old olive tree remembers being barely the height of a stone and clinging to Nature’s words like they were some form of stability. It feels the same way now, wary but aching to believe in Nature the way it used to.

_Soon?_

“Soon, dear tree. You have done so well.”

The taller of the women, the doctor, asks, “What are we having for dinner?”

“I want to make you olive bread to celebrate, but the olives we have on our tree always taste kind of… sad? Can olives taste sad?”

The women turn toward the old olive tree, and the doctor looks over the clumps of olives weighing down the tree’s branches while her sister collects up her baby, settles the child onto her hip, and sidles on over to the tree.

“Hey Mr Olive Tree,” she says with a gentle smile. She props a knee on the garden bench the family of three sometimes sit on together, and pats the old, weathered torso of the tree. “I really want to make my sister victory bread, so please make some happy olives. In return, we’ll take good care of you from now on.”

It sounds like a prayer, an oath, and the old olive tree finds itself amused at the notion.

“We could press a little oil too, when I’m on holidays.”

The young mother looks at her sister incredulously. “You know how to make olive oil?”

The doctor shifts uncomfortably. “One of guys graduating with me this year makes his own oil. He could help.”

Laughter rings out in the open yard, a musical noise that has the little baby giggling happily and the doctor blushing.

The old olive tree feels something stir, deep inside its ancient soul.

It remembers the old tree it grew up with, bloodless and heartless and so very tired, but filled with the kind of love that knew no difference between plant, animal, and human.

It remembers the happiness both trees had felt when the birds were singing and the girls were happy. It misses that happiness.

“What do you say, Mr Olive Tree?”

_I am large_ , the old olive tree says. _And I am strong._

And for the last time it promises, _I will stay with you all for a little longer._

**Author's Note:**

> <3
> 
> **Bib:**  
>  Barnes’ (1991) Aristotle v. 2 for the translation of Pseudo-Aristotle’s On Plants (Princeton University Press)  
> Curd’s (2007) translation of Anaxagoras’ fragments (esp. DK 59B5 & B6) and testimonials from Theophrastus and Pseudo-Aristotle (DK 59A117) (University of Toronto Press)  
> Guthrie’s (1962) A History of Greek Philosophy v. 1 for translations of the philosophy of the Pythagoreans and Anaximander (DK 12A14), and fragments of Alcmaeon of Croton (DK 24B2) and Philo of Alexandria (De Opif. Mundt, xiii 44) (Cambridge University Press)  
> Inwood’s (2001) translation of the poem of Empedocles (esp. DK 31A78, B11) (University of Toronto Press)  
> Jones’ (1923) Loeb Hippocrates v. 2 for the translation of the Hippocratic treatise On the Art (quoted: VIII 13-16) (Harvard University Press).


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